


And Floppycat Makes Three

by BaaingTree



Series: The Marriage of Convenience [3]
Category: Justice League International (Comics)
Genre: Age Difference, F/M, Platonic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 03:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11304765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BaaingTree/pseuds/BaaingTree
Summary: Booster continues being Gladys's houseboy, makes tentative steps back towards superheroism and borrows a cat.  Gladys also makes him an offer.





	And Floppycat Makes Three

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, this is really messed up continuity for Guy, since this story goes into Superbuddies time. I don't know jack about his Warrior days, and they don't quite function in the timeline anyway, so just assume we've got yellow-ring Guy, newly recovered from his Warriordom.

Booster has been living as Gladys Thatcher's houseboy for three months when he starts doing her hair for her.

Up until that point, Gladys did it herself. For a good while, Booster didn't realize she had arthritis in her hands--people don't get that in his time, and anyway, she hid it from him. But one day he finds her at her dressing table, fumbling her hairbrush with a look of pain on her face, and he puts it together, why she always asks him to carry things for her, even light things, why the flight ring hasn't changed that.

Then she sees him at the door, and he can tell she didn't realize he was there. For a moment, she's missing the dotty old woman face, and he realizes that to her, this is the real humiliation. Not her exposure in the papers, not being called a trophy wife, but being unable to do her own hair.

He comes in and picks up the brush.

"Michael..."

"Don't worry," he jokes. "I always had the best hair on the Justice League. Though you probably use less product..."

And it makes her laugh, just like he hopes it will, and she teaches him how to do her curls, twentieth-century style. It's enough of a novelty for him that his enthusiasm isn't faked. ("You take burning hot metal and stick it IN YOUR HAIR?") They make it into a history lesson, and that takes some of the sting out of it--Gladys can treat it like just another house-boy skill, instead of something she can no longer do.

For a while, doing Gladys's hair requires enough concentration and effort that Booster doesn't register anything else, but as he gets used to it, he comes to notice her scars, small lines below her hairline. Since he's been with her a while, he feels comfortable enough to ask her about them.

"Well, of course, Michael," she says, "it was the fifties. Nobody gets a face lift thinking about how it'll look forty years later."

"You had a face lift?"

She pinches her cheeks with a sigh. "Two and a revision, actually. I know it's obvious."

She thinks he's joking. He's not. People don't get face-lifts like that in his time.

"You know," he says as he brushes, "I have a hard time telling people's ages here."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. People would live until over a hundred all the time, when I'm from. We had treatments, stem cell stuff, things you don't have. It just throws the whole thing off."

She chuckles. "No getting old, no arthritis. Whyever did you leave?"

Booster thinks about how he's managed to ruin his life in two different time periods and says nothing. She notices his face.

"I'm sorry," she says.

"It's fine," Booster says, and keeps brushing out her hair.

* * *

Gladys has been on Booster's flight ring for a month now, but they have a tacit agreement that she only wears it in private. Even though Booster's ring is technically sort of his, and he can give it to whoever he wants, he doesn't want her getting mugged by some supervillain wannabe. So when it comes to going out, she still has to take her Aleve, feel the effects of gravity and the linoleum floor. She acts as though it's nothing, but Booster knows her well enough now to know she's in pain.

Still, although Booster offers to do the shopping for her, she refuses to stay in the house.

"I'm not a hermit," she says as she gets her cane, "and I haven't let my life be controlled by the press, my husband, rest his soul, or the opinions of others. I certainly won't let it be controlled by my HIP. Besides," she turns for Booster to put her pearls on her, "you always buy the cheap brand of prune juice."

So they're at the grocery mega-store, pushing a cart full of prune juice, cantaloupe, and baking supplies, and Gladys is feeling the pain. Oh she moves smoothly and holds her head high, but Booster can see the lines of strain around her eyes. He's lucky she's of the old guard; it means he can offer his arm. She accepts it, giving him a wan smile of gratitude.

Whispers and stares follow him down the aisles. Admittedly, Gladys stands out a little bit--not many people buy groceries in a cocktail dress and pearls--but Booster knows it's not her everyone's staring and muttering at. Booster's identity has never been a secret, and up until now, he's never regretted it. With a swallow, he stares straight ahead and pretends the only thing on his mind is groceries.

"Double fiber or touch of molasses, Gladys?"

"Oh, get the fiber. It's good for you." She catches his eye and he knows she's playing the same game. When he bends to put in the cart, her eyes tell him to keep smiling.

A man comes over.

"Hey," he says. "Aren't you...?"

"No," Booster says.

"Are you sure?"

Gladys looks at the man imperiously. "Do you mind?" She says. "I am trying to get my exercise and my shopping done."

Her expression is so cold that the man mutters an apology and backs off, and this time, she takes Booster's arm without it being offered. It's not because she needs the support; it's because he does.

He's grateful.

* * *

Booster has been Gladys's houseboy for about six months when the hero urge starts creeping up on him again.

For all his claims of doing it for the glory and money, Booster actually really liked being a hero. He wants to go out there, get cats out of trees and people out of burning buildings again. But he can't quite summon the guts. With the number of people in Spandex running around the area, he's bound to run into someone he knows, and he doesn't want to deal with them. Awkward questions would be bad, but awkward silence would be even worse. Besides, he hasn't heard from any of them.

He doesn't exactly reach out himself. When he moves in with Gladys, his old phone line is disconnected, and his Justice League communicator has been gathering dust in a box for ages. But hell, Batman's the world's greatest detective, and Ralph's no slouch either. If they can't chase down Booster and spread the word, then they don't want to talk with him.

Well, the hell with them all. Booster has a nice old lady to bake cookies for every Thursday, a tomato plant that is doing quite well now that he's learned to water it properly, and none of his body parts are at risk of being chopped off. He tells himself that that's all he wants and needs.

But the world isn't as easy to get rid of as Booster would like. It sneaks up to bite him one morning while gardening with Gladys. The two of them are standing in front of their newest project: a godforsaken little peach tree that simply won't thrive, no matter what they do. Gladys squints at it from under her sunhat; Booster puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head. He's given up on the thing, himself.

"Do you think it needs pruning?" Gladys asks, rubbing her chin.

"You aren't actually PLANNING to get peaches from this thing, are you?"

"Well, not many, no, but still, it seems so shoddy, somehow. I think you're supposed to tie the branches down parallel to the ground..."

Booster raises an eyebrow at her. "You know about pruning?"

"I got some books from the--" her head jerks up at the sound of the phone ringing from inside. "Oh! One moment, Mikey dear, be right back..."

She pulls off her green rubber gloves and totters into the house, while Booster calls after her, "If it's my fanclub, tell them I got immolated in a freak rocket explosion."

She gives him her best "silly boy" glance and then she's out of sight.

Booster looks at the peach tree. It drops a couple leaves at him.

"Superhero. Saved the world a hundred times before breakfast. Can't keep a peach tree alive." He rolls his eyes. "No wonder I quit."

To his surprise, the door opens again, and Gladys is back, holding the phone. She looks surprised--and oddly, slightly annoyed.

"Mikey? It's for you."

"It's... what?" But she's thrusting the phone out at him. Blinking, he takes it. "Um... hello?"

The voice is so loud he has to pull the receiver away from his ear. "Gold! Finally, I get ahold of your sorry ass. The hell happened to you? I had to go to goddamn Salaak to get your digits..."

Booster isn't sure whether to be pleased or horrified. "...Guy? Guy Gardner?"

"The one true Green Lantern," the voice finishes for him. "You remember my name, even. I'm touched."

Of all the people from the old circle the call him. Somehow, all he can say is, "...Guy?"

"Whaddaya sound so surprised for? Can't I call you?"

"Well, it's just... I thought you were... uh..." Somehow, even with the company he keeps--kept--Booster can't bring himself to say, "I thought you were dead and horribly mutilated, drifting in the depths of space," not even to Guy Gardner.

"Hey, I'm from Baltimore. They raise us tough in Baltimore."

Okay, Booster has to give Guy this much; he makes him laugh. "What're you calling me for? Don't you have a bar to run or something?"

"Ah, gone out of business."

"Blew up while you were... uh... indisposed?"

"Yeah, something like that. I'm kind of between gigs at the moment. Hey, who's the broad who answered the phone? You living with your great-great-great-grand-mom?"

"She's my wife." Booster figures it'll get a laugh.

"Haw! Yeah, you wish, Gold; even I can keep a date longer than you. Anyway, I just made it to your stretch of the country, your 'wife' sounds like a teetotaller, and you must need a drink."

Booster hasn't been out in public, since the news hit. And on the list of people he'd like to know about it, Guy would be right below his ex-girlfriends. "Guy, I'm not in the business anymore, I'm..."

Guy sounds almost offended. "Hey, who said anything about the business? I'm just talking a friendly drink. I've been regrowing parts of me I never knew existed; God knows I ain't up for any shenanigans."

"Look, it's not that I'm not flattered," that makes Guy snort, "but I'll have you know there's a peach tree desperately needing my assistance right now, and..."

"Oh wow, you're whipped. Maybe she IS your wife. C'mon. The drink's on me. I'll even pull for beer nuts!"

"I dunno, Guy..."

Apparently Guy is REALLY determined to have social time with Booster, because he loses the cajoling tones. "Gold, are you going to come and let me buy you a goddamn drink, or do I have to break through your wife's nice clean windows and wreck her doily collection to drag you out of there?"

Booster sighs. This can't end well. "I'm coming, I'm coming."

"Look, if it helps any, I already saw the news, Spanking Boy. I know, and I don't give a goddamn. Is Marccione's still open? Meet you there at six. And don't expect me to spring for any mimosa, it's draft or nothing."

And then Guy hangs up, leaving Booster a bit stunned and Gladys standing at his elbow, frowning in curiosity (and possibly disapproval).

"Michael, who was that?"

Somehow, he doesn't want to tell her. He's been enjoying keeping his Booster Gold life and his Michael Carter life separate. But he says, "One of the old hero crowd. He invited me out for a drink at Marccione's."

"Really?" Gladys doesn't sound impressed. She struggles to her knees to start trimming a rose bush--in case of paparazzi, she leaves the flight ring in the house. "For a hero, his manners left much to be desired. Where was he six months ago?"

"Er, regrowing organs in space, apparently. Last I checked, he was dead..."

"Oh!" Gladys puts a hand to her mouth. "Oh, I'm so sorry!"

Booster laughs. "Don't worry, it's kind of an occupational hazard. Anyway, he says he saw the news, and he doesn't seem to care, but I don't know. I mean, hey, that peach tree won't kill itself..."

"You should go," Gladys says.

"What?"

Gladys puts down her clippers and looks up at him. "Go. Go see your friend, and have a manly moment."

"Well, I'm not sure if 'friend' is..."

"He's reached out to you when nobody else has. You can't just stop being a hero like that; surely you must miss it. Go."

She has a point. And so at five thirty, Booster puts on his old leather jacket from the Conglomerate days and walks to Marccione's. Walks, not flies; Gladys still has his flight ring and she needs it more than he does.

* * *

True to his word, Guy buys Booster a beer. "Hey, Gold. You've gained some weight."

"Good living in the lap of luxury." Booster makes sure to invade Guy's personal space a bit, making it obvious that Guy no longer towers over him. "You've lost some weight... and gained some short."

"Ha ha, sit your smart ass down and drink your beer."

Last time Booster had checked in, Guy had been some sort of Hulk-ish monster with permanent face paint. Now he looks a lot more the way he had before: a bulky, slightly ugly man with only a slightly less terrible haircut.

"Got tired of being called Moe?"

"Jeez, Gold, take you out of the superhero game and you get catty. I bought you a beer!"

"It's draft."

"There's nothing wrong with a draft beer! Now drink it; it's on my dime."

Booster rolls his eyes and drinks his beer. He would never admit it, not under torture, but he's kinda relieved to see Guy. He's an obnoxious pain in the ass... but at least that's normal. In a way, he prefers this to any sort of awkward attempt at commiseration or understanding.

They drink, and talk about space aliens, and midway through, Guy suddenly makes a very fake look of surprise, holds his ring near his head, and goes, "Well, whaddaya know?"

Booster doesn't fall for it. "I told you, I'm not in the game anymore."

Guy appears to be listening rapt to his ring. "My ring's picking up a call! It just so happens that there's going to be a crime next door in twenty minutes."

"Your ring doesn't pick up phone calls."

"Sure it does! And there's kittens and nuns involved!" Guy's attempt at looking earnest is even worse than his attempt at surprise. "You gotta help me, Gold."

"I didn't bring my ring. Or my gear."

"Who needs that? You know, I was a superhero without my ring."

"I heard. You were terrible at it so you went and stole Sinestro's."

"Well, yeah. You gonna make me be better at it than you?"

Booster isn't sure what surprises him more: that Guy successfully insults him on an adult level, or that it WORKS.

So they go out into the night, and they go and bust a cat-hoarding cult run by fake nuns, and it's ridiculous and Booster almost gets shot, but at the end, him and Guy save the day, and a truckload of cats. They even go and deliver them to the animal shelter, in a large yellow pet carrier construct.

Most of the cats are thankfully okay--though covered in filth and miserably unhappy. But one is slated to be put down--it's a miserable scraggly looking thing that looks like it's been hit by a truck, and it staggers around drunkenly when left to its own devices.

"It's going to lose a leg, an ear, and an eye, no matter what," the vet says. "And that flopping? That's cerebellar hypoplasia." When Booster and Guy look blank, she explains, "It's a brain disorder. It's never going to get better."

The implication is clear: the vet bills are higher than it's worth, and nobody is ever going to take this miserable thing home. But Guy, perhaps remembering his own brain damage days, takes an uncharacteristic interest in the cat and decides he'll take it.

"I'll pay for it," he says, and digs around in his pockets. "How much is it?"

The vet names a price, and Guy turns to Booster hopefully.

"Help a guy out? Dying kinda took the funds out of me..."

Booster rolls his eyes, but he digs into his wallet, and between the two of them, they manage to pay for the newly-christened Floppycat's vet care, shots, and adoption fee.

That's when Guy turns to him and goes, "So, uh, I haven't really gotten a place of my own yet, and..."

Booster sighs. "I hate you."

"C'mon. Every old lady needs a cat, right? I swear, once I get set up, I'll come and get it."

Booster hears the implication. "I'll take the cat home, but I won't take YOU."

"Me? Live with that old bat? Yeah right! I got a hotel room." Guy gives him a double thumbs-up. "Promise. It'll all be fixed in a month or two."

When Booster gets back to Gladys's place, a little disheveled and beat up and carrying a sedated cat in a box, it's past midnight. He finds Gladys asleep in her armchair, apparently waiting for him. She jerks awake when he touches her.

"Oh! You're all right!" She hugs him. "I worried."

"I'm fine, not a scrape," Booster says.

She holds his face in her gnarled hands and looks at him from multiple angles, as though to see for herself. Then she asks, "How was it?"

Booster thinks about it. He smiles. "Good."

"Good! Tell me all about it!"

So he does... and then he shows her the box, which he left outside the room.

"Oh Michael, you didn't."

"It's not mine!" Booster feels the urge to say. "It's... it's Guy's. But he can't take it home just yet."

Gladys floats over to the box and surveys its inhabitant dubiously. "He wanted THIS cat?"

"Its name is Floppycat. And he REALLY wanted it, enough to pay most of the bill to keep it from getting put down. I think it reminds him of him."

She looks at the heap of orange furr in the box and purses her lips. "Hmm. Will he come back for it?"

Booster can't honestly answer that question. So he gives her a puppy-dog look, and she sighs.

"Fine. We'll take care of it, for now. But he had better come and get it!"

It takes Guy a month and a half to sort out his housing. Until then, Gladys and Booster care for the cat. For all its appearance, it turns out to be a lovable, staggering purr-monster, perfectly happy to watch Golden Girls and being spoiled rotten. Gladys and Booster feed it fish and adore it, and soon they have to admit that having a cat around is nice.

One night, as they're all sitting in front of Wheel of Fortune together, Guy calls. Gladys answers the phone, and they have a short conversation, which makes her wrinkle up her face, then burst out laughing. Then she says goodbye and hangs up.

"He's going to pick up Floppycat," she informs Booster.

"Aw," he says, scratching the kitty behind one ear. "I'd gotten kind of used to it."

"Yes," she agrees, petting the cat. "We should get one."

"Yeah," he says. "We should."

Silence for a moment. "When did you tell Guy that I was your wife?"

He snorts. "Wait, he actually believed it?" Then he sees Gladys's face. "Oh. OH. I--uh. I was joking. I didn't mean..."

She looks at him. "Would you want to? For paperwork matters," she adds quickly. "I... don't have anyone to give my estate to. It'd make things easier."

She's mentioned it before, in passing.

"I'll have to think about it," Booster says.

"Of course," she says quickly, laughing a little too lightheartedly. "Take all the time you need."

She drops the subject, and they continue watching gameshows until she falls asleep on his shoulder, and Floppycat falls asleep in his lap. It's all very quiet and domestic.

Booster just sits with one arm around Gladys and one hand petting the cat, and he thinks.


End file.
